Now, in this galaxy, and not far away….
WHAT IS “STRATEGY”?
Your first actual strategic move is developing a 360 degree viewpoint. Why?
Because strategy includes (1) a ranking of your assets and liabilities and (2) a plan to eventually increase and secure your assets while decreasing your liabilities.
A strategic plan should include a mission goal AND a mission statement (what do you want to accomplish--look beyond the obvious). The mission statement includes the viewpoints of any potential opponents to the plan. The mission goal is the reason or intent for implementing the plan. In a chess tournament, a player's simplest goal is to win the immediate game, but a more-forward thinking player may propose to win in a way which advances chess as a consistent truth. The difference is sublime, but often critically important, for often the sublime mind finds ways the obvious mind fails completely to perceive.
Once the strategic plan is established, next in consideration, as everyone knows, is a selection of a series of potential tactics.
Of course, everyone thinks tactics is “just detail”. And that can be just SO wrong.
Tactics is the implementation of a specfic action toward a particular priority on a particular strata.
Finally, progress is overall growth of your most important assets (YOU “almost always” get to choose which those are, although some assets are not exactly liquid).
Life, and business, really is that simple--and that’s the problem, isn’t it?
Note: The true warrior’s only real opponent is always time. All other opponents can be defeated in one way or another (even through simple patience), but time can only be delayed, even with patience and accumulated knowledge.
Now, what is all this based on? Largely on Batsai (So Lim Sa, China, circa 1550 AD), the oriental martial art form based on preparation for hand-to-hand combat surrounded by eight opponents.
Note: When stratifying your assets, at least one--the closest “in peril” strata to your personal “heart”--will immediately begin to scream at you. As one is taught in the implementation of batsai, “Don‘t move, yet. Fear is just a liquid flowing through you--if you let it flow, fear will go.” And you can begin to move as the fear actually flows through and away from you. As always, and oft stated, “Don’t forget about breathing….”
Lack of planning for contingencies that are very possible, even if they are somewhat doubtful, may be the most serious problem mankind faces. Without planning, when these contingencies occur, the resultant reaction, over time, creates a situation where the only seeming appropriate response must be to panic. Many decisions are frequently made without sufficient information, and one of the most common decisions is to eliminate possible contingencies because they seem “unlikely”, especially if they are considered “too horrible to think about right now”. So no provision is made. And when that contingency strikes, no series of actions, no plan is in place to implement. Panic ensues.
The tendency to not collect at least minimal information regarding a contingency (part of the planning process, after all), means that if the contingency does strike, the only possible response to the lack of a series of options is to immediately feel overwhelmed--which causes panic to set. After just a few such contingencies, unlikely as they may have seemed--perhaps with other consequences that were also very much unforeseen--panic can become set as a de rigeur response to any unexpected turn of events. Therefore, constant collection of information, and consideration of consequences, on even doubtful contingencies, is one of a group of several prime necessities.
So, is there a method, a paradigm, to effect this state of "constant information collection" with some indication of WHICH information to collect? Historically, the game of chess presented a "learning game" paradigm for this process, but early in the twentieth century chess "became obsolete" as a reasonable paradigm for cultural interaction, being substantially limited to two-person interactions. FITE chess is built on the "if I do this and he does that, then I will...." The twentieth century was not the very dawn, but the full cultural continuance, of three-person or more interactions on a moment to moment basis. This spawned the constant question of, "If I do this and then that person does A, and another person does B and a third person does C, what will I do?" So, like any living truth, chess has eventually grown:
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To fish eggs, the direction of the river's flow is irrelevant. But, to the adult fish, the direction of the river's flow is paramount.
A Survivor's Guide on How to Manage Your Bank Accounts/Credit Cards and Buy a House
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